After Years of Waiting
by viva los angeles
Summary: Phil returns to the future, but Keely doesn't let her get it down. Can't say more without giving it away! R&R. Pheely oneshot.


**A/N: Ugh, more shame on me for writing another, is probably what you're thinking. But this is just going to be a one-shot (hopefully). So, without further ado, here it is!**

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_After Years of Waiting_

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Keely stood at the edge of the driveway as the Diffys' RV/time machine backed out of the garage. She watched, sobbing, as it began to spin on its axis, and then it disappeared. Something bounced in front of her, and she saw a blinking red ball. She picked it up and started up crying again; Phil had left her a skyak. Blinded by the tears in her eyes, she sprinted down the sidewalk to her own house, where she had lived by herself ever since her mother died in a freak car accident. It had been six years that the Diffys had lived in Pickford, and in the 21st century, and Keely wasn't sure she could deal with the end.

So she decided it wouldn't be the end.

--

In college, Keely majored in technical engineering. She made a fortune, billions and billions of dollars' worth of fortune to be exact, developing the first self-updating, all-encompassing information gadget. This would be the predecessor to the Giggle, a gadget Phil had shown his friend in their sophomore year.

Keely lived by herself in a mansion, a "smart house" so to speak, that had computers embedded in the walls, which were giant plasma monitors. Keely had also designed this, twenty-four years after Phil left. At any moment in time, she could touch a button on a touchpad and have the walls change. Sometimes she made them the sky all around, including the floor, so that it felt as if she were floating in the air. The furniture was lightweight titanium made to look like wood, so it was easily moved. Everything seemed ahead of its time, which was what Keely was aiming for.

The neighborhood children in Pickford made fun of the "old techno-geek" that lived in that stucco down the street. They had never seen her, the forty-five year old Miss Teslow, but they teased her anyways. Many a morning would Keely look at her home monitoring system and see the eggs and tomatoes that were smashed on her wall. She simply pushed a button and they were soaked into the walls and whisked away into the landfill pipes.

Many rumors circulated about the mysterious mansion. More than one child had run to an adult to tell them about a UFO they had seen… an orange and yellow UFO, somewhere above the stucco. Some of them even bragged that they had seen Miss Teslow; her hair was supposedly long and tangled, and she wore the same clothes every day.

This was far from the truth. First of all, Keely never left the house. She remained inside every day, all the time. Secondly, she took good care of herself. She exercised every day on a treadmill and took custom vitamin complexes several times a day to remain young. She looked only thirty, but she felt ancient inside. The loss of her best friend and her mother, the two most precious people in her life, were still taking their tolls on her psyche.

Keely had one friend, one person she talked to. It was a certain Via. Thirty years post-Phil, Keely invited Via to live in the "castle." Via gratefully accepted the invitation, and history was made as someone stepped into the mansion for the first time. The two best friends worked out every day together, and both did pretty much the same thing all day – tried to remain as young as possible.

Via eventually passed away in the year 2062 at age seventy-two, fifty-one years after Phil's departure. People knew that Keely had outlived her friend; they knew she was still alive. What they couldn't figure out was how she still lived to one hundred, eighteen years after Via's death, but Keely had something her friend had never possessed. Keely had a reason for her madness. She was absolutely determined to live as long as she possibly could.

--

In 2121, Phil and Pim Diffy were walking down their street in their neighborhood. They lived where Pickford had once stood. Their friends had been awfully confused when the family returned to the future. All of them had aged a lot; Phil looked about six years too old for fifteen, Pim looked at least twenty, and their parents looked worn and tired.

Phil stopped outside of a large gaudy stucco. "This is where Keely lived," he whispered to Pim, barely able to bring himself to say her name. Pim smiled sympathetically and leaned her head on her brother's shoulder. She was as tall as he was.

"And they went and… committed sacrilege against a beautiful house and built this _mountain_ here," he continued, spitting the words out. "Come on, we're going home." Phil grabbed his sister's wrist and spun around, storming home.

--

It was 2100. Keely was celebrated as one of the oldest living women on the Earth, at age one hundred and ten. She had long outlived the children who used to tease her; everyone she had ever known was dead.

Through a very small window of bulletproof glass, Keely looked outside. The world had changed so much since she had built this house, sixty-five years ago. Houses were much more modern, and no cars drove the streets – skyaks zoomed two feet above the roads instead. Since she had her own, Keely could have joined them. Or, if she wanted to go somewhere, she could have teleported herself from the telecenter just down on the street corner. She refused that as well. All the food she needed she had, cloned from the same food she had eighty years ago, and she ate the same thing every day, never tiring of it. Her beauty had not diminished, though it was a different beauty. She looked about sixty, a dignified old woman with silver hair piled atop her head and wearing a classy black skirt suit.

Her days had been spent, since the year 2070, working on a new gadget. She had designed the most illustrious futuristic gadgets, including a blue thing that did pretty much everything she named the Wiz'rd, and a silver crescent called the Replicator. Her gadgets were household items for every modern family; but no one who used them knew exactly who made them. They just appeared on the market, credited to a woman known as "Katie." This gadget, however, was different.

--

The doorbell rang at the Diffy house. Barb pressed a button and the door dissipated, revealing a woman who looked many years her senior. She was wearing a red gown that looked oddly familiar, and seemed to accent her aged beauty. With a wave, Barb invited the woman in. She held out her hand. "Hello, I'm Barbara Diffy."

The woman smiled and nodded. "I know who you are. I'm Katie."

"_The_ Katie? Celebrated engineer of the 22nd century? I thought you were a hermit?" Barb asked, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead. Katie nodded.

"That's me, Katie the hermit," she said in a voice that sounded too young for the body it came from. "Do you have a place I could sit down a spell?"

Barb nodded, pressing the button again and the door rematerialized. _She speaks awfully old-fashioned for such a brilliant woman_, she thought. Nevertheless she invited the woman into her sitting room, pointing at a blue glowing silhouette shaped like a couch. Katie responded by pointing at a lush red 21st century armchair, to which Barb cocked her head. "Why would you want to sit there? That's so old!" It had been in their Pickford house, and they brought it home as a souvenir of sorts.

"It reminds me of home," Katie said in a wispy voice.

"So," Barb sat opposite Katie in the modern couch, "what brings you to my family's humble abode?"

Katie sighed, her shoulders rolling with the effort. "I'm looking for a certain young boy," she said. "Possibly your son."

'What do you want with my son?" Barb asked curiously.

"I need ideas for new gadgets that would be more useful to children," she answered simply. Barb nodded enthusiastically.

"Phil!" she shouted up the stairs. Phil appeared immediately and Katie gasped. A ring resounded through the house and Barb leapt up from the couch. "That's the phone," she apologized. "Of course, you probably know that, since you designed it!" She dashed into the kitchen, leaving Phil and Katie alone together.

"I'm Katie," said the older woman, holding her hand out to the youth.

Phil accepted the hand and shook it briefly before returning to his spot propped up against the wall. "I'm Phil," he replied callously. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," she said, getting up and walking to his side. "Close your eyes."

He did as he was instructed, mostly out of exasperation. He could hear a faint beeping and he opened his eyes. A cry escaped his mouth before he was shushed by the girl in front of him.

"Wha… who… where'd Katie go?" he demanded of the blonde once he pushed her hand off his mouth.

"K. T.," the girl corrected. "It stands for something. Can you guess what?"

Phil's eyebrows popped up near his hairline. "Keely? Keely Teslow?"

The blonde winked and nodded.

"Wow, I never would have guessed… how did you do that?"

She waved something that looked like a thick gun. "The New-Ager," she giggled. "I designed it. And all those other things you showed me years ago. Who would have guessed?" Phil's mouth just dropped open.

"But how did you live so long?"

"Determination," she answered. "I wanted to see you so bad, Phil."

Barb reappeared in the doorway, having finished the phone call, and she almost passed out. She rubbed her eyes furiously. "I must be seeing things."

Keely ran up to Barb and hugged her tightly. "It's me, Mrs. Diffy!"

"Now I know why that dress looked so familiar," she said, amazed. Opening a drawer in the wall she pulled out an envelope of pictures. They were mostly of Pim's repliboy date from that dance in 2005, but one was of Phil and Keely. She was wearing that same dress now.

"How can you just accept it like that?" Phil asked incredulously. "I mean, I know it's her, but you…?"

Barb shrugged. "Anything's possible in the 22nd century," she quipped. "So, Keely, where do you live?"

"Same place I always did."

"That gaudy stucco down the street?" Phil asked, and then caught himself. "I'm sorry, I was just so mad at it for taking your place."

"You should have stopped by," she smiled.

--

Six years later, in 2127, Phil and Keely were both twenty-seven, thanks to the New-Ager. They were skyaking in the skyak Phil had left for her a century earlier, high above the frozen tundra of Greenland, admiring the Northern Lights and recreating their skyak ride from long ago.

"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Keely yelled over the roar of the engine.

Phil looked back at her. "Me too." Engaging the afterburner, they sped towards the ground, where they landed smoothly. Keely pulled a blanket from the side pocket in the skyak and spread it on the ground. A soothing glow emitted from it and they lay down on it together, staring up at the sky. It warmed them greatly, and Phil rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow.

"Sure is gorgeous," he mumbled.

"Yeah, I'm such a sucker for meteorological phenomena," she said with a chuckle. "Just like your mom."

Phil shook his head. "Not up there. Down here. You."

Keely blushed, though it was hardly visible in the dim orange light from the blanket. "Me? But I'm old enough to be your ancient ancestor."

"Not anymore," he smiled and pulled something out of his pocket. Keely gasped as she saw the velvet-covered box and rolled to face him.

"Oh my God, Phil," she whispered.

Phil opened the box and removed the delicate platinum band with the glowing white stone from the padding, holding it in his right hand. He picked Keely's left hand and held it in his. "Keely, I've been waiting for one hundred and twenty-three years for this," he said. "Please, marry me."

"On one condition."

"Anything," Phil said eagerly.

Keely smiled. "You have to move into my house."

Phil nodded and slipped the ring onto her ring finger. "I love you, Keely."

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**A/N: awwww how sweet :) R&R and read my other stories!**


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